Pseudoscalar Meson Electroproduction Above the Resonance Region

Abstract

One principal motivation for studying exclusive reactions is that they provide a new class of observables, called off-diagonal parton distributions, for the internal structure of the nucleon. The study of exclusive reactions provides a probe of nucleon structure complementary to purely inclusive studies. The simplest, and possibly the most promising, type of experiment is exclusive electroproduction of pseudoscalar mesons at small t, and at large Q2 and W. We show that using the CLAS spectrometer at JLAB and with beam energies between 4 and 6 GeV, we can obtain good quality electroproduction data that will improve our understanding of nucleon structure.